Getting Ahead of the Curve

Well, it has been a fairly productive weekend and I managed to get 2 posts written for my blog at CFM for the upcoming week.  That means the next post will be for Friday so I am 4 days ahead on my posting schedule.  It has been quite some time since I have been in this position.  My goal was to get 3 done, but I will take what I can get.

I also wrote a link post this morning and got it published so I guess you could say that I really did get 3 posts written.

It seems that having a regular posting schedule is an asset for a blog so that readers can know what to expect.  I also think that more publishing leads to more traffic since the regular readers need to read more and there is more material for the search engines to search and find some longer tail keywords.

My plan is to keep a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule for the rest of the year at least in order to keep up the intensity and make it through the Yakezie Challenge.  I also have someone submitting to Carnivals for me which I am also hoping will help drive some traffic as well.  These are my two major strategies for increasing traffic over the next 2 months.

1. Regular posting schedule
2. Carnival submissions

I am hoping to almost double my traffic over that time to 2,000 visits per month from 1,200.  I think it is possible.  The most positive aspect has been search engine traffic increases over the past few months.  I would think that I might be able to get up to 600 search visitors per month by the end of December.

For now, though, I will be taking the rest of the evening off and try to write some more tomorrow.  I hope everyone has a good week.

Why I Am Sticking With HubPages

As you can see from the title of this post, I am sticking with HubPages.  Now there is a lot of potential meaning in those words, and they could be taken in many different ways so I will be explaining myself.  It could mean that I believe HubPages is a viable method of making money on the internet.  I suppose it might work for some people, but it really doesn't mean that for me.  I have found a much more profitable method of generating income.

Essentially for me those words mean that I won't be deleting all of my Hubs like many others may have done.  In other words, I will retain HubPages as a source of passive income.  I haven't written anything for the site since June 4 of this year and that was really to complete a grand total of 200 Hubs.  Before that, I hadn't published since March.  I only end up going to the site every few days and checking to see if I have any comments to address.
 
Despite that lack of activity, I managed to earn $14 through their Ad Program and a couple bucks in Amazon purchases and AdSense ads.  Clearly, it is not the most lucrative venture but it is entirely passive at this point and pays for my hosting costs at Hostgator.  That is clearly OK in my book.

HubPages got hit big with the Panda update in March of this year.  I saw my traffic nearly disappear and decline through the summer.  But recently, I have seen an uptick.  However, my traffic is still less than half what I received in January 2011.  It would be great to see a return to that level, but I won't necessarily be doing anything to encourage traffic since I feel that my efforts are more useful with other projects.

Nonetheless, I won't be complaining too loudly about income that will pay for my expenses without any effort on my part.  I am pleased that I can continue to earn passive income for work that I have already done.

I Think My New Posting Schedule Will Work

I have been inspired to post 3 times per week at my blog, Cash Flow Mantra.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a new post will appear.  I may even occasionally be able to post a review with links on the weekend.

I started my new schedule this past week and am pleased to see that my traffic was up about 40% as far as I can tell.  It only makes sense.  Before, I was only posting about 2 times per week on average.  Since most of my readers currently are regulars with not a ton of search traffic, that meant a reader would see the article and then only come back later when something new appeared.

Now since there is new material more days each week, then I am likely to get more traffic from my regulars with more opportunity that one of my posts ends up in a weekly round-up somewhere.  I also have that many more phrases for some long tail searches to find my blog.  I figure that will only enhance any search engine traffic.

Search engine traffic is actually growing fairly nicely as well along a slow upward trend.  Currently about 27% of my traffic is from Google.  I expect that this number should continue to increase and might even be about 40% by the end of the year.

According to Google Analytics, for the past 30 days, I have had just over 1300 visitors.  I think this is a respectable number for a blog that only started at the end of May.  I would like to have about 2000 per month by the end of the year.  I think with my new schedule, I could come very close.  I did have a big month in September when one of my articles got linked from a larger blog.  I then got over 100 visitors per day for about 5 days.  That was cool!  But now, I am back to my regular level of traffic.

Earnings are OK, but certainly nothing to write home about.  I have been a little disappointed but I have come to realize that there will be a constant ebb and flow in that regard.  Eventually it all evens out in the end.  My goal is to just make about the same as I did last year and to improve upon that each year after this.

Well, I still have to get about 5 posts written for CFM over the next 6 days before I head for Honduras.  I did get a guest post for one day over the next 2 weeks leaving me 5 to go.  I have ideas for 2 of them but will need to spend some time thinking about the other 3.  Anyway, thanks for reading my blog here.  I really appreciate it and thank you for your continued support.

Trying to Write Ahead

Well, I plan on heading to Honduras for a mission trip in the within the next few weeks and will be gone for 10 days.  I will have limited time and internet access while there so I will be working diligently to write some extra posts over the next week or so for my main personal finance blog.  I would like to get those posts scheduled to come out over the time while I am away so that I don't have 10 days without any activity.

I think this is one of the coolest features about Wordpress that I had never really embraced until I started writing for my own site.  I am pretty sure that I could schedule posts here as well, but I never really felt the need.  I was writing whenever I could for the content farms, and it didn't really matter to me to maintain a certain level of consistency.

But now since I am trying to build a strong blog and following, I think it is vital to interact and stay active.  I have been posting 2-3 times per week, and I believe that it would be detrimental not to publish any new material over a 10 day stretch.  So, I will writing furiously tomorrow and this weekend to get several posts ahead.

Well, I better get busy so this post will be somewhat short.

Amazon Comes Through Again

Well, I am now 9 for 9 this year with Amazon orders and shipments.  Each and every month so far this year, I have had an order from Amazon and some positive earnings.  I thought the streak might come to an end this month.  I did have a couple orders, but I had a return from last month so I was actually at a negative earnings number.  But yesterday, someone ordered 4 books and a flashlight so my negative $1.33 will be positive.  Plus I will be at 6% commission.  Yay!

I can't wait to see what happens as we get closer to the holiday season.  Despite somewhat crappy traffic over at HubPages, I am still making the occasional sale with Amazon, getting a few dollars per month with the HubPages Ad Program, and making a little off AdSense as well.  It turns out those 200 articles are worth a little something.  And now, it is strictly passive.  I only wish that the traffic would grow more.  I would bet by the end of the year, my traffic at Cash Flow Mantra will exceed that of HubPages, and that the earnings might as well.

Speaking of earnings, I should be getting paid from Amazon shortly.  I haven't really figured out their payment schedule so I don't know if it will be toward the end of this month or early next.  I will also be getting a check from Google in the next week or so.  This will be my third for this year and eighth total.  I can't wait until I start getting monthly checks.  I figure that I need to see my traffic increase about 4 times before that happens.  It would be nice to think that I could get that accomplished in 2012.

I am not sure the best way to increase traffic.  I really don't plan on doing anything different than what I am currently doing.  I am considering a contest or something, but I don't know how sustainable that traffic would be so haven't taken the plunge to do that yet.  I will see where things end up by the end of 2011.  I understand that the summer is typically slow.  Now that fall and winter are approaching, I will see what happens.  Many of my records have been set in October so I am curious to see what next month brings.

Congratulate Me on 200 Posts!

I only realized it when I went to write this, but this is my 200th post for this blog.  It hardly seems possible to have written that much, but it has been a little over 2 years.  I am encouraged to think that I have been able to stick with it for so long.  Many of the blogs that I followed on Blogger haven't posted in a year or more which just goes to show that persistence plays a huge role in being able to be successful.  Not that I consider myself successful, but I am closer than if I had quit.

My next goal for this blog is to get to 100 followers.  You can see in the sidebar that I am at 84.  I don't know why I like round numbers so much, but I do.  Although if you are a regular reader and don't follow, I would prefer that to following and not reading.  I want to thank everyone who reads regularly and who has supported me through your encouraging words.  I don't think I could have kept at it at times without knowing that someone was out there reading.  Thanks so much and good luck with all your goals for the rest of the year.

Completing the Yakezie Challenge

I am excited to report that I completed the Yakezie Challenge with my blog, Cash Flow Mantra this week.  What that means is that I was able to get my Alexa ranking under 200,000 within six months of starting the challenge.  I actually started on July 1st, 2011 so I had until the end of the year to complete the task.  As of this moment, my actual Alexa ranking is 198,607.

That being said, I certainly don't plan on quitting.  I will discuss a little bit more about that in a moment, but first I would like to explain how I was able to decrease my ranking so quickly.

No Secret, Just Writing and Interaction

There really isn't any big secret that I used to decrease my Alexa ranking so quickly.  I simply posted some content about 2-3 times per week and began interacting with the Yakezie community of personal financial bloggers.  Actually, that was probably the most important aspect of getting traffic and growing the site.

Through commenting on other individual blogs, I was able to find some readers who took an interest in what I had to write.  Occasionally, these bloggers would enjoy a post and link back to my content.  This was probably the biggest factor in any success that I have enjoyed thus far.

Now, I am starting to generate a little bit of search engine traffic as well.  Hopefully, both social traffic and search engine traffic will slowly increase over time such that I am able to grow the blog little by little.  Up til now, the traffic growth has been fairly quick.  Of course that is because I am growing off a small base.  But I suspect that it will become more and more difficult over time.

Future Plans

I certainly don't plan to stop working hard at this point.  I would like to see my blog grow as much as possible by the end of the year maybe to the point of getting 100 visitors per day.  That seems like a stretch at this point, but I do believe that it is possible.  I will probably continue doing what I have been doing and reassess my progress and plans at the beginning of 2012.

I want to thank each and every one of you readers here who have been reading my other blogs and following my progress.  It is really exciting to see something develop from scratch.  The other part that really excites me is that I was able to develop this using Wordpress and get something done that one year ago was really frightening to me in concept.  The bottom line is that you just have to step out and get it done.

Record Traffic Day at Cash Flow Mantra

Just when I didn't think it was possible to increase traffic significantly at my blog, Cash Flow Mantra, I discovered that my suspicions were unjustified.  It turns out that a simple link at a relatively well read blog lead to a bunch of traffic to one of my articles.  Of course I have gotten links before, but the amount of additional traffic to the site didn't spike nearly as much as it did yesterday.

My previous daily high for traffic happened almost one month ago and was 62 visits according to Google Analytics.  Yesterday though I received 151 visits which is more than double!  I simply can't believe it.  I am so excited.  The article that was linked was one of the most recent ones, My Investing Strategy for the Next Decade.  Apparently many people were curious enough to read and click on the link.

I am hoping that I might pick up a few regular readers this way and that my level of traffic will achieve a new plateau.  I am also hoping that the traffic may somehow help in my rankings and authority with search engines so that I can get more and more search traffic since search is more correlated to earnings than regular visitors.  Of course, if I could get a few advertisers that might help but I am sure it will all come in due time.

Life and My Finances is Giving Away an iPad2

One of the personal finance blogs that I read is giving away an iPad2 to celebrate his one year anniversary.  Wow!  I can't imagine making enough at this point to be able to do that, but who knows.  Maybe someday.  Anyway, be sure to get over there and enter.  You have nothing to lose and could win an iPad2.  And if you don't win, you can buy one through my Amazon link above.

Thanks so much for reading.